Until God used my two little apple trees to send me a clear message, I thought … do I dare say this? I thought I knew the Lord—I knew about Him.

It may surprise you, but I’ve been in this work 35 years or better, and yet, I’m telling you I had a breakthrough. I could pray it, I could preach it, I could pray it for other people, I could talk to them about it and explain it, but I really didn’t know what I was talking about until it happened to me in such a forceful way. It left no doubt.

The Lord extended His special grace and mercy personally to me. I know Him now because He said to me in unmistakable terms (and I don’t mean a shout out of the ceiling), “I am the Life-giver. I decide. I’m going to extend you enough mercy, I’m going to extend to you enough grace, so you can continue to serve Me.” It turned me upside down. This personal experience took me to a new level.

Two things are different for me now. First, there is this urgency. I’ve got to get on with this. It is far more urgent now. God has been so merciful. He’s extended so much grace. How much of it have I wasted when we could have been way up the road by now?

Then there is this sense of reality. God actually knows me. He actually knows who I am; He knows where I am. I’m just a dot in the universe, but as expansive as He is, He really knows me.

I’ve read the texts, “He numbers the hairs of your head”; “He catches your tears in a bottle”; and, “He measures all your grief.” But wait a minute—He knows me personally! He cares about me personally! He would turn things upside down just for me! That’s good to know. And it’s not arrogance at all, because you know that you don’t have it coming.

Through so many avenues—working through my wife, my children, my siblings, even my staff here at the office—God has spoken to me. “I’m real, and I can change people. I can change attitudes.” And I say, “Wow! I would get sick to have some of those things done.” I would. Nobody wants to be sick, but to think, “Man, if He would use me, if some experience with me can change situations and people. …"

It changed me. I started scrambling around, mending some fences. I thought it was necessary now that this reality has come to me and this urgency has come to me. I said to myself, “Okay, then you don’t have time to be you. You’ve got to be who God wants you to be. Stop being you.”

I always prided myself, “I’m going to be me. Let the chips fall where they may. I’ve got my own ideas about this thing and I’m probably right.”

In my big family we have this thing that we can put up with just about anything but stupidity. When you boil that down, that’s a bit arrogant because it says, “We’re right and you’re probably wrong.” I’ve got to have room for other things and other opinions and other attitudes.

Ours is a strange faith. It’s one that is easily misinterpreted into works. I see so many trying to work off this heavy load that God is eager to lift. It is difficult for some to come to Him and lay themselves bare and say, “Lord, you know I’m a mess. You stuck with me this far. Please free me and establish me and carry me forward.” He has more than enough grace and mercy to do that.

Each of us must experience the fullness of God’s grace and mercy extended to us. It frees us to become like Him in the way we treat others. Otherwise, we can get into a mode of thinking that we’re all right and everyone else is not. We become hard-nosed about everything and so judgmental about people. That’s a very dangerous position to be in.

If your nose is in the air, and you’re pulling your righteous robes about you looking askance at everyone else, you probably have not had the experience of realizing your total unworthiness, yet your inestimable worth to God. You probably have not experienced the depth of His love that so willingly extends mercy and grace to you. And He puts it out there. It’s extravagant. It’s not rationed out.

I heard my nephew Henry explain it one time: “It’s so extravagant that it just flows out and wastes on the ground if you don’t take advantage of it.” I just wish more people did. It would put us in a more productive mode. We would be concentrating more on serving Him since we know that He has done all the things that would reconcile us to Him. It would cut us loose to really seek the Lord and ask, “Lord, what would You want me to do now?”

I’ve always prayed, “Lord, help me to never lose my joy.” But now I’ve inserted into that prayer, “Lord, help me to love people the way Jesus loved." That’s different for me.

My experience of being diagnosed with cancer was a fearful thing—it was scary. I knew what I needed to do. I needed to lay hold of the Lord by faith. Your faith can dissipate the fear, but your faith does not prevent the storm from coming. You still get the storm, but now you’re in it with God.

When I really got hold of the Lord by faith, I got to the point where I could say what Job said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” And that doesn’t come easy. There would be times when I would sit alone, and if I wasn’t careful I would think of all the negative possibilities, and that didn’t do me any good. So I moved away from that, took hold of faith, and said, “Yes, but God is my Savior. I am His. I belong to Him. So this whole thing is up to Him.” Faith dissipated my fear.

When my brother Harold called to tell me he had been diagnosed with cancer, I said, “I need to pray with you. You know God is in charge, don’t you?”

“Yes. I know He is.”

“You know He will decide?”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay with whatever God decides?”

“Yes, I’m okay with whatever God decides. Now, I want to live, but whatever way He wants to come—He’s God. I’ve already learned not to question Him.”

You know the main reason why my brother felt that way? God has such an excellent track record. There’s not a person who couldn’t say that God has been extraordinarily good to them.

In a few weeks he died. My brother was 78. That’s a lot of years. And you know what grace and mercy did? Not all those years were good and productive and obedient to God. But God’s mercy and grace said, “I’ll allow 78 to make sure you get it together before I let you sleep.”

It allowed my brother to build his relationship with God. It allowed him to have all his children about him, all trusting the Lord, saying, “Dad, we’ll meet you.” That’s awesome. He quietly slipped away looking for a better day.* Could you find a better God than that anywhere?

I had two prize little apple trees. I fertilized and watered and carried on. This is the first year they bore apples. I noticed Japanese beetles on them so I sprayed them. But I sprayed them with deck wash by mistake and killed my trees. The leaves turned brown and shriveled up and all the apples fell off except two little red apples. I was crushed.

I was dealing with my cancer and my brother’s cancer and things couldn’t be much worse. I’m thinking, “And now I’ve killed my apple trees. What is it about you, fella?”

I was just devastated, but I never stopped praying. I never stopped talking to the Lord. I never stopped expressing hope to Him as to what He might want to do in my life. I looked out my French doors one day and saw those trees budding again in the same season. They leafed out—beautiful green foliage all over—both of them. I was amazed, and stood there tearfully talking to the Lord. “Thank You. I hear You. I got Your message, ‘I am the Life-giver. I decide who lives and dies.’ So You’re telling me that You’re in control of this and I’m going to live.” Now I don’t know who else might have gotten a different message, but that’s the message I got.

I went out one day while recovering from my surgery to just pluck those two knotty apples and throw them away because they had held on no matter what the wind did. I discovered they were fully grown and developed—no wormholes—and without an imperfection. My wife Jackie and I stood in the yard and ate them tearfully. They were the best, sweetest, juiciest apples you’d ever want to see.

You know the end of the story? It was so significant I had Jackie take pictures of me in the backyard with those two apple trees. In mid-December, when all the trees in my yard and neighborhood were dead and all the leaves were on the ground, my two apple trees were still green and flourishing. They were still leafed out in the snow. They finally dropped their leaves at the end of December.

God is an awesome God. He took two apple trees to talk to me, to talk to His servant, to talk to this dot in the universe. To think that He would take the time and the divine effort to make my apple trees flourish again to give me reassurance.

Does God care enough about us as individuals? Most assuredly, He cares. He cares enough for one person that Jesus would have died if I was the only one who needed His salvation.

You can’t shake that from me. I’ve got it. I’ve got it set squarely, and I’ve promised Him something—that anybody who got near me would hear about what He has done. I’m telling it everywhere. And I’m always amazed at the results—seeing people tearfully accept the story and ask questions about it. Even men have shed tears because it is so personal and it’s so close. You can reach out and feel like you can touch God through this story. He actually came to my yard? Yes!

It makes you want more. You say, “Okay, God is here. I know for sure now." It’s not something that’s up in the air. You want more and He likes that, I’m convinced.

When we crave Him and His presence, He’ll come near to us, through the power of His Spirit, full of grace and mercy.

Walter Wright is the Lake Union Conference president.

*"A Better Day" is a popular gospel song written by Harold Wright's wife, Eleanor Wright.